Cominius

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Joseph Marcell

This is Joseph's first season at Shakespeare's Globe. Other Shakespearean roles include Sir Toby Belch in Twelfth Night, Brutus in Julius Caesar and Angelo in Measure for Measure. Joseph has worked for many theatres, including the Royal National Theatre and the Birmingham Repertory Theatre. He has also appeared in films (Cry Freedom and Sioux City to name a couple) and in many television programmes. You may recognise him from playing Geoffrey in The Fresh Prince of Bel Air.

Bulletin 1

Becoming an actor
My name is Joseph Marcell and I’m playing Cominius in Coriolanus. In August, it will be 36 years that I have been an actor and I’m still trying - I haven’t got it right yet! When I was 19 or 20, I wanted to be a metallurgist, an electrical engineer kind of person, and I was doing a year of industrial training down at Southampton power station. I used to travel up to London on weekends to meet my friends and have my mother do my washing and all those things that if you’re lucky enough to have parents you don’t have to do yourself! I used to come to London on a Saturday afternoon. I’d arrive at Waterloo and I’d walk across the Waterloo bridge and my friends would pick me up at the station. We’d go over to Kingsway and go to a little pub we knew and then we’d have a few drinks and talk about our week. Then we’d go and do what young men do and ‘pull’! It wasn’t called ‘pulling’ in those days though, it was called something else, I can’t remember what.

And one day, in about 1965, we were crossing Waterloo bridge to Aldwych and we walked past the Aldwych theatre and there was the Negro Ensemble as part of an event in London that happened in the 60s and 70s called the World Theatre Season. There was this group from America called the Negro Ensemble. They were doing a play called Black New World. For my friends and I this was one of our first experiences of theatre - you know we’d been to the theatre before with school, but we hadn’t really been to the West End, as it was then.

And outside the theatre were these huge photographs of black actors, singers, entertainers and we were really chuffed - we thought this would be quite the thing! So we went in to see it and it was just amazing. I was blown away. So from then on every Saturday they would pick me up and we’d go and see a play. I saw Maximilian Shell in The Man in the Glass Booth, all sorts of things, wonderful productions. That was how I got my love for the theatre. The Aldwych theatre then was the home of the Royal Shakespeare Company. So, I went to school, I learnt to be an actor, I got a job at the Sheffield Playhouse in 1970 and I decided I didn’t want to be an engineer I wanted to be an actor!

I went to live in west Hampstead, because I was told actors lived north of the river, not in Peckham or Bermondsey where I lived! I went to a very good school and learnt a lot about acting and I met some wonderful teachers. After that, I went to the Sheffield Playhouse for a while and then I came back to London and my then agent said to me ‘I believe the RSC are casting and they haven’t seen you so I’ll try and get them to see you because you’ve been up in Sheffield’. So I went to the RSC to audition. The actors were saying ‘Oh they’ve got this new guy who's just taking over, he was one of the young assistant directors and apparently he's really brilliant. His name is Trevor Nunn. This is his new season, his new regime and he's doing the Roman Season, he's doing the Roman plays; Titus Andronicus, Coriolanus, Julius Caesar, Anthony & Cleopatra, and The Comedy of Errors, and yeah, yeah it will be great’. So I went to see him and I prepared my speech from Julius Caesar, Brutus’ speech:

Romans, countrymen, and lovers! Hear me for my cause; and be silent, that you may hear. Believe me for mine honour, and have respect to mine honour, that you may believe. Censure me in your wisdom, and awake your senses, that you may the better judge.

That one! So I did that for the casting director, and then they said, ‘We want you to come back and do that for Trevor’. So I came back and did it for Trevor and John Barton and Terry Hands, and they asked me, ‘Do you mind playing small parts?’ and I said, ‘No, are you kidding? I want to be in the RSC!’ I felt I had made the right decision, because after a year in Stratford the plays come to London to the Aldwych, so I came back to the Aldwych and that's how I became an actor. It came full circle.

Auditions
Auditions are unbelievably nerve-wracking. I think there are two types of audition. There are the auditions for film and television where they have an idea of what it is they wish but they can’t express it, and it's usually to tell you that you are not the idea, that you are not the embodiment their idea. But theatre auditions are different, you have a wonderful way of impressing and I love theatre auditions. You are incredibly nervous but it's like a stage performance and if you’ve prepared as carefully as you can then it's a piece of cake. I did a singing audition for the musical Hair once and I learnt that singing is not my thing! For theatre auditions you have to marshal all your talents, your whips and your organisational skills and if you do that well enough then in some ways it really doesn’t matter if you get the job because it is an opportunity to show off and show how good you are at a certain thing. Sometimes you may not be the right height, you may not be what they’re looking for but you get the opportunity to exhibit your skills and that's what I find fun about auditions.

Acting on stage and television
They’re very different jobs. They’re another tool in the tool bag really. I’ve been lucky enough to be in the really successful Hollywood type of acting, and that is about success, that's about personality and there comes a point where you’ve got the characters you’re supposed to play down so well, that it really is about you. Whereas a theatre actor can create something and move it in the direction that he wishes it to go. In film and television you have to adjust your creation to the way the thing is filmed and set up. You make more money but you have less power.

I have difficulty when I come to do the stage! Theatre actors know the play they are performing so well - they know exactly what it's about and you kind of make decisions before you begin rehearsals. But when you’re doing a film or a television show, every moment has to be explained to you so that everything happens in sequence and your characters development is credible. So you have to be dumb really, you have to stop thinking for yourself! And it's very difficult to come and do a play and have that attitude because people think ‘What's the matter with him? What's wrong? It's on the page, you can see it’, and you say ‘No, no, sorry I don’t understand, what does that mean?!’ It's hard to act in a play but it's also interesting because you have a lot of choices.

Sometimes when you are doing a play you are forced to do what is often called radio acting, in which you spell out what is happening in an obvious way: ‘The gun in my hand is loaded’ that kind of acting. Obviously if you were to do that on the Globe stage people would walk out because they’d think ‘What is this?’. To not do radio acting, every moment has to be clear and the clarity comes from your director and you discussing it and in certain cases having it explained to you. One of the things I’ve learnt in my career is there is nothing wrong in saying you don’t know!

You perform the play every night, and every night it's a different audience, the responses are different, they have different expectations. Some people come to see an exhibition, some people come to be part of a performance and you have to adjust to what it is they wish from you. But if every moment in the play, in the way the drama and story unfolds, is clear it really doesn’t matter what their expectations are because they will get what they want from it because your character will be so clearly delineated that it doesn’t make any difference. It's just that you’ve got to keep your wits about you and remember what you have to say and where you are supposed to be!

Preparing for a role
I’m one of these actors who works from the inside out, and it's very difficult for me whenever I’m doing a Shakespeare play because 95% of Shakespeare is the words, the iambic pentameter ‘de-dum-de-dum-de-dum-de-dum’. It's about how you get the language across and so that is working from the outside inwards. The way I prepare is I really go the opposite way. I try to slowly understand what it is I’m saying, why I’m saying it, and the point of it, what does it mean, where does it stand in an historical context and can I get my tongue around these words?

Once I’m confident with that I begin to personalise it, I begin to understand the character. So a lot of moments have to be explained to me because I’m not at that point where I can see the full story. There are a lot of images in the play of blood, of defeat, and of success and the kind of actor I am, the inside out actor, I need to be able to visualise those moments to make those words make sense. For me it has nothing to do with the beautiful speaking - the beautiful speaking has to come from the pit of the stomach and the peak of your imagination and with Shakespeare's plays that's how I approach them. I try to get my tongue around the words and when the words make sense I begin to create a character. I use the Michael Chekhov system where you use a psychological gesture, you find a gesture that gives you the character and gives you one of the vertebrae of their spine and then you start building slowly, slowly, slowly from there.

Bulletin 2

Rehearsals so far
I’m absolutely terrified! I think I’ve made decisions that I will change, that will not last - they’re simply spring boards and stepping stones to what I really want to create in the end. At the end of this week in rehearsals I’m surprised I’ve done so much work in one week! I’ve had a lot going on. We’ve had voice, movement, we’re now learning jigs, we’ve read the play and discussed the meaning of things, put the play in an historical context, we’ve had lectures and talks about the Romans, about the time of Coriolanus when they were just building the legend and tradition of Rome. They had not got the rituals and that whole thing yet. It's a rougher, more butch society.

The danger with these plays is that what you’ve seen before influences you. If you’ve seen somebody do it really well you have to try and put that out of your mind. I remember the wonderful actor, well I though he as a great actor in my day, called Clement McKellen who played Cominius, he was a matinee idol, 6’6”and lean and huge voice and aggressive. Every time I come to do a bit he comes to mind, and that's not the way I want to do it!

First impressions of Cominius
When I first read the play the first thing that came to mind was that he is a wonderfully gentle politician. He's a great warrior, but in the politics of the play he's a measured man, everything is considered. I have no doubts that he has a very clear sense of who is and his position in the society and his class and all that, but he tries to be the consul of the people. Although the patricians may get 98% of his attention he affords the plebs the 2% that they deserve. He thinks he is being fair and he does it gently!

Rehearsals this week
We’ve got through the whole play now and we’re going back from the beginning. Today we’ve been rehearsing the kind of hustings of the play. Coriolanus has been elected by the Patricians as the new consort and he's going to the people now. He's gone down to the market place to meet the farmers and all those other people and they have to say ‘yay’ or ‘nay’ and it's not going to turn out very nicely. We’re at the point where things are coming to a head and it's very difficult for Jonathan, who plays Coriolanus, because it's a scene that rises in tempo from now until he is banished and there are a lot of stepping stones that are not fully set yet. It's fun but it's difficult.

It's difficult for us all because our listening to his arguments is no longer listening as in a reading, it's listening to a man trying to convince his peers. For me just listening to what he says sometimes distracts me, but it's a very delicate time so actually listening to the arguments rather than worrying about whether your cue comes up is important. It's a conversation - how you react to the points that he's making. If he's saying ‘The people are curs’ you have to react to show whether your character believes that. These people may be plebeians but they are Romans too and they have certain rights and we agreed to those rights is probably what Cominius might be thinking. Coriolanus wants to abnegate those rights and believes the plebians don’t deserve them. We may also think this, but we might have another enemy where we need the plebeians to come and be the foot soldiers. It's one man trying to destroy one aspect of the state and although he's one of us, how do we deal with this? It's the heart of the play, the one man one vote democratic issue and we’re continuing with that this afternoon.

It's interesting because most people say Coriolanus has no humility but I think in our production he has no political sense. He doesn’t understand the give and take of politics. He's a simple man with direct responses to things and he doesn’t know how to bite his tongue or find a nicer way to say things and consider the other person's feelings.

Bulletin 3

Learning Lines
Learning lines is a very strange process because you learn your lines and your cues but you never quite learn other characters’ speeches and the stuff that comes before. In the course of it you discover parts of the conversation you didn’t even know had been written, so it's an interesting time. For me especially, I’m a very slow worker so it's challenging.

Some people have tricks to learn their lines like taping it and then listening to the tape. I am a simple man, I learn it line by line, laboriously, methodically and by rote. I put a piece of paper over the speech and the cue before then I learn the lines. I say it about a thousand times then when I’ve got it I go on to the next line and I forget the one I’ve learnt! But that's how I do it, line by line, slowly. I know all my lines but I don’t quite know in what order they come or what prompts me to say what it is that I say, but I know them!

There are some people who have photographic memories who can learn stuff just by looking at it, but drama is a conversation. So the problem is you not only have to learn your line but you have to learn the whole scene, everything that goes in that moment. It's like geography: it's about being in the right place to say the right thing, it's about hearing certain things that are a spring board to another idea. So you may have your lines, but what comes before is as important as saying the speech beautifully.

Rehearsing without scripts
It's a very dangerous time because you start acting and acting's a dangerous thing because you are acting without context. The character isn’t formed, you’re taking leaps. It's also fun because you begin to discover things but it's like your security blanket - the script - is taken away. If you sat through ten minutes of rehearsal at the moment, the choice of swear words is just wonderful; perhaps the actors’ most creative time!

The DSM (deputy stage manager) is on the book [they have a copy of the script to prompt actors who forget their lines] and of course the director knows the play backwards and he has the script with him so he reminds you that it's ‘which’ and not ‘that’, those little things. It's like taking your first steps on a high wire, you think ‘I’m going to fall, I don’t have my pole’ but you don’t fall and if you do people help you. Then we’ll begin pulling it together and trying to marry our ideas of character and what Shakespeare wants.

Highlight of rehearsals
For me, it's the point where I don’t care what anybody thinks! If I can’t remember a line or I make a mistake, it's all right. A problem with rehearsals is that you’re acting for your peers and you worry about yourself in front of them, but actually it doesn’t matter. It takes a lot of time to get there, sometimes you don’t reach that point until just before the first preview. You have stop worrying about what people think and concentrate and try and build the thing that you’re building. Once you can give that up you come on leaps and bounds. I think I’m just about at that point.

Of course, most importantly, one of the highlights is the encouragement the actors get from Mr Dromgoole (director) that you are moving in the right direction or you are not moving in the right direction and he has been very encouraging. He's a great audience because he does follow what you’re trying to do and he does encourage and that's been one of the great achievements.

In my case, the work we’ve done on movement has also been useful because of my gammy knee and my needing a certain amount of weight for the character of Cominius. Movement is also an acting quirk. All the character's I’ve played make a certain sound when they walk through the air, they make a certain sound on the ground, whether they walk on their heels or their toes, the shoes that they wear are important. I find that if I can get the characters posture and how he holds himself, how he sees the world. He may be the shortest man in the world but does he look down upon the world?

We work with the Head of Movement at least once a week. Last week we got her three times but as things get more chaotic and intense, these moments will have to be snatched. These are also very subtle times because you can’t ask them to tell you how to do your role but you can get them to explain the empirical connotation of what you say. They kind of explain it and give you insights to what you are saying but they don’t give you line readings and that kind of stuff!

Character development
I’ve forgotten what my initial impressions of Cominius were now! It's terrible; I wish I could get them back. Those have gone and I have other things I need to concentrate on. It's terrible really because you force yourself to remember your initial impression but you should just forget it and it will come back. I am confident enough that I am consolidating and building on what I had before. It's no longer in the forefront of my mind, I don’t think about it, I’m sure it's been personalised by now.

Bulletin 4

Technical Rehearsals
A technical rehearsal is simply what it is…it's the logistics of the play or even the mathematics of the play. It's how you make one and one into two, and two and two into four. It's how you marry all the disparate elements. In this case, our only elements are actors, costume, set, and music. Lighting we leave to the gods. And it's how you get all those things to act as one, to become united and present the play.

Of course, we’ve been rehearsing the play in a rehearsal room for the last five weeks, and the play we did in the rehearsal room and the play we are doing on the stage are not the same thing. There's a kind of intimacy to a rehearsal room; after a couple of weeks I would say it becomes a ‘safe’ space. You get used to the height of the ceiling, or the noises from outside and people are within your sight. But then, you get out onto the stage, where you have to be bigger, e you have to be more distinct and you have to speak more clearly. When we rehearsed, for music the DSM [Deputy Stage Manager] would shout ‘Trumpets’ and that was it, we would keep going. When you actually get out there and you have the musicians, who are playing the music live…well we had expected just ‘Trumpets’! As an actor, in rehearsals you use your vocal excitement to build the scene. But in the technical rehearsal you find that the music helps and the costume helps. It gives it a kind of immediacy. It's about bringing them all together so that it looks streamlined, united and all going in the same direction with the same purpose.

Good and bad things about technical rehearsals
The technical rehearsals are long and can be tedious because you can be on your feet for twelve hours and you are in costume. Especially on a day like today when it is 26 degrees centigrade and you are wearing a leather jerkin and lots of layers. I don’t have a toga because I am a soldier, but I do have armour, and sweaty arms and metal don’t go! We have stockings and jerkins and some people have codpieces (I don’t, thank goodness!) and it's not just wearing the costumes but getting in and out of these things as well. In a rehearsal room, you can run across the stage to get to your next entrance but in a real performance you can’t do that, so you have to time how long it takes to walk backstage, through the bookshop, round to the front of house and through the gates to arrive on cue. All those things have to be worked out.

I have a couple of additions to a costume, and I have half a scene to get it on, so I need to know who is going to help me put my armour on; my helmet, my cape and my sword for example. There is usually one person because there are lots of other changes going on at the same time, but if you are lucky you get two. It requires a lot of calm. If you get there and there is no-one around, you simply wait. The person will come and help you. You begin to unbuckle and everything and just wait. The backroom girls work as hard as we do. They have to learn the play, and whereas we have five weeks, they have only three days. They have to learn the scenes, and when the actor comes off, and what he changes into and the same for the ladies costumes too. They have to have it all ready downstairs; the costumes, shoes, blood…! Luckily the blood is only on my armour. It's alright getting it on, but the problem is getting it off for the next scene, after the war is over! All these things have to be worked out as well.

Costume
We are given fifteen minutes to get into costume. It's got shorter now, and I would say it's about ten minutes, to get the stockings, the breeches and your shirt. But, of course, we don’t have buttons or hooks and eyes so everything has to be tied with bows. Obviously you can’t tie your own cuffs, so we have to help one another with that. Then there are your shoes, and your jerkin. And many of the guys wear togas. Then you check out your make up, making sure that's ok. And the make up is original practices too.

The plan from now on
Well this afternoon or tonight we do a dress rehearsal, and tomorrow we’ll probably be called about ten thirty or eleven, then we’ll have notes on the dress rehearsal. If things go really, really wrong we’ll have to rehearse those things. Dominic [the director] will tell us what we did wrong and what we did right; what didn’t work and what needs to be tightened. Basically, we work out what the show needs to make it run smoothly and to be exciting. So we work those bits out, and have another dress rehearsal in the afternoon, and our first preview tomorrow night. And then we will continue working like this until Wednesday which is when we open to the public.

Bulletin 5

Personal pre-performance rituals
Lots of people do have rituals. Personally, I try to get myself warmed up. I do sit ups and things like that. A couple of people stare at themselves in the mirror and stuff like that. Then I keep my script at my station, because you are subconsciously really, going through your role while you are getting ready, and your conscious mind gets this thing where you can’t remember a line or a word. The conscious rituals for me are simply trying to do some sit ups and get myself together, and get myself into the frame of mind to do the role. There are also the questions of, who am I, why am I here, what do I hope to achieve, how am I going to do it and what do I want to sacrifice? Those kind of things. And you try to answer those questions as the character. Not as yourself. It's like superstitions; everyone has their own, but I approach it as a boxer would. I get really warmed up, and ready for the fight.

What is the most nerve wracking thing?
It's the walk from the dressing room to the tiring room, that's the hardest thing. It's not quite dead man walking, but it definitely is the walk of no return and you have to make sure you know-as far as is humanly possible- all of the things you have to do when you get down there. Because otherwise it means you have to come all the way back, and once you are there, there is no time. Thank God that someone is there with the prompt script, so you can check things. You may have forgotten a ring, or a handkerchief, or your props. But the props are kept down there in the prop store, so you can’t have forgotten them. And while you are there waiting, you are kind of sucking in the atmosphere, the buzz from the audience. I find one of the most exciting things about going to a concert is listening to the orchestra tune itself. That kind of creates an excitement, and hearing the people talking, and then they quieten down, and then all of a sudden there is an understanding between you and them that it is time to begin. It's the most amazing thing. In general there is a nice atmosphere. There's a buzz of excitement in the air; a tinge of excitement, nerves and fright and all that kind of stuff.

First night
When you walk out on stage you see all of these faces and no matter how seasoned you are, it does take you back a bit. But it was superb, it was fun. I didn’t fluff my lines and got through from the beginning to the end so that wasn’t bad. We had a couple of errant pigeons which could have been a bit distracting! Also, at one point I think Robin [who plays Menenius] said ‘Oh me, the Gods!’ and at that moment a helicopter flew by! But luckily there were no major distractions.

Matinees and evenings
They feel different, the evenings and the matinees. In fact, even when the sun shines there is a difference. When the lights are on the Globe is almost like other theatres; there is somewhere to hide. When it is a bright evening and a bright afternoon, the thing you notice most of all is every expression on people's faces. I have entrances through the groundlings and I sort of talk to my soldiers in the yard so I can see the audience up close. It's really nice; you are sort of torn between showing off and acting!

But the most interesting thing is the light as you watch the shadows move throughout the course of the play, the quality of light changes. It becomes more golden as the evening goes on. And I’m not a tree hugger or anything! But this week, Sunday especially, it has been very clear. It really is quite stimulating, but it is evocative too and it can change the performance. It changes not the context, but the feel, the taste of it. It really does affect it. I mean the noise of the rain affects how you listen. We’ve also had some very windy days and the dust rises and it all forces you to adjust. It's fun, it really is. But there will never be two performances the same because the atmosphere and the life are different. It really is gorgeous.

The weather on the press night was spectacular
It really was, but we’ve had some rainy ones too. I think we did a Sunday matinee in the rain, and the poor groundlings were saturated. They were just standing there and you felt so sorry for them. I have to run around the yard and come up the ramp, but what am I worrying about? I believe that sometimes the volume of the water is too much for the drains, so the floor rises! I think it's happened during Titus Andronicus but not with us.

Bulletin 6

Being recognised
Sometimes, when I’m standing in the yard, people want to talk to me about The Fresh Prince of Bel Air. One man came up to me and said, “Hi, are you Geoffery from The Fresh Prince?” and I answered, “No, I am Cominius from Rome!” When people come up to me during the play, I have to say, “Sorry, I’m waiting for an entrance” and, “You can take a picture, but I cannot pose with you.”

When I first walk on stage, I am aware that there can be a ripple of recognition - I notice it but I try not to take it into account. It is an actor's dream to have an audience and I have an audience. I am recognised and it is perfect. I don’t think that anybody presumes that I am ‘Geoffrey’ playing Cominius, it's just that they need a familiar anchor. It's great and long may it continue.

Reviews
I think reviews are important but I don’t read them. My wife does but I don’t. If I were directing the play I would be interested in the reviews. I’ve been told the reviews for Coriolanus are pretty good but I find that reviews can then influence what I try to do on stage so it's better to ignore them. Often, the press department collate the reviews and send you a pack at the end of the run. I usually don’t want to read them then but a month later I might start to wonder what they said so I’ll look them up. I use them more as a resource rather than something to stroke my ego.

Performing in a long run
I think that performing a play in a long run does have particular challenges but it is all part of the job. The main challenge is trying to keep the play fresh and true to itself and not expect the same response from the audience that you had yesterday afternoon or last night.

The other day I was sitting in the dressing room going over my lines, and someone said to me, “You must know your lines by now!” And it's true, of course I must know them by now but it's important to keep reminding yourself of what you are trying to achieve. It's like remembering the plan; you have to think about your original intentions. Although everything may get easier after a while, the fact that it is getting easier is due to the fact that you stop thinking, you stop trying to make it fresh and singular. You have to constantly keep reminding yourself what it is that you are saying right before you go on, just before the half, all the time.

So a long run is a terrific challenge. In some runs you don’t have the problem, you don’t need rehearsals, you simply come in for the evenings and you do your bit. I think the Globe expects a little more than just coming in and grabbing your cheque and going home. There is a certain amount of commitment. I think that as an actor you need that challenge and you need that commitment. You don’t just simply put it on and chuck it out there. It's either well baked or it's not.

The jig call
Before every performance, we have a jig call. The whole company goes onto the stage and we rehearse the jig we do at the end. There are two reasons we do this: firstly, if haven’t done a show for a few days then people need to get together and talk and secondly, it's an action piece, it's a reminder of the movements and it is a group action. The words you can do on your own but this sort of brings us all together for a common goal.

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